- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

Papa, you remember the whole idea of an elegant sit-down meal right in the middle of the day?

- Yes, sit-in.

I'm afraid these days, it's a bit of an endangered species.

- Well, let's bring it back.

- That's the spirit.

We can start with a luncheon classic, parsleyed ham with a tangy remoulade sauce.

Linguine with fresh clam and spring vegetable with a simple green salad will make the perfect entree.

- And for dessert, how about plums poached in Cabernet Sauvignon?

- Perfect.

Join us for an elegant country luncheon.

- Next on "Jacques Pepin Celebrates."

(Claudine laughs) - We'll start by showing you how to do a jambon persille.

- Oh, uh... Parsleyed ham.

- Parsleyed ham, yes.

- Yeah.

- Usually, you need gelatin in it because it's a kind of aspic dish, and for the gelatin, we are going to use pig's feet here.

You see those pig feet here?

- Oh, I love pig's feet.

- Yeah, and we find them regularly at the market.

I have about two pound here, and those are split in half.

You know, pig's feet, theoretically, you know, we used to buy only the front leg, which is fleshier than the back leg, you know, and we want to cure it.

You don't really have to cure it.

You can cook it just as this.

But the curing gives some intensity of taste, and especially that beautiful red color.

So, the curing is made of salt, a half a cup of salt, which is going to wash it out after.

And we have some cloves, you know, a bit of allspice.

- Allspice.

- A bit of thyme.

- Mm.

- Bay leave, sugar.

- Oh.

- And a little bit of this here.

This is sel rose.

Pink salt.

- Pink salt.

- And the pink salt is actually, I'm putting, like, a teaspoon at the most here.

And this is a mixture of sodium nitrate and salt.

And this is used as a curing agent.

In fact, on the market, you can even buy Morton curing salt, you know, which is at the market now.

- Now, does it matter that the herbs are dried instead of fresh, or does it... - No, no... - If you have fresh... - That's what you call a dry cure.

- Okay.

- As opposed to a liquid cure, where you actually put water and do a brine.

Here it is dry.

You put it together like that.

You keep it a couple of days in the refrigerator.

- Okay.

And then... - And that's what we have here after a couple of days.

- Looks like this.

- And when you want to use it, we got to wash them now.

- You have to wash them?

- Well, you have to wash all of the cure, all of the salt, all of that stuff out of it.

- [Claudine] So, you just rinse them off?

- Yeah, just take the salt out of it.

So, all there is to do, cover it, bring it to a boil, cook it about two and a half hours.

- Right.

- And at the end of this, that time, what we have left is about a cup and a half of the liquid left.

- Oh, really?

- Yeah.

- So, you cook it uncovered.

- Yes.

- And it just... - No, no, no, you cook it covered, but you cook very slowly.

- Okay.

- And the pig's feet here, you know.

Now, the pig's feet will pick up all of those and those have to be picked.

- I know why you're... - So, you know, you love to do that.

- [Claudine] Getting me to help and not Mom, she'd eat everything.

- Yes.

Okay, and with that, we're going to have a cup and a half of leek here we need in that thing.

- So, it's really something that you start a day or two ahead.

- Well, if you want to cure the pork, more even than that, I mean, two, three days ahead.

- Okay.

- And in fact, when you have it done, you can keep it for, you know, a week, 10 days, you know.

So, here I have that in there.

Now, the shallot, just slice... Thinly slice.

Can put onion, you know.

Sliced shallot.

Leek.

Okay, garlic, and that stuff, you have all of it here?

- Wait, you put a skin in here, so, okay.

- Oh, it's okay.

- Okay, you put that in.

- So, this... - I'm gonna go rinse my hands off.

- Yeah, you gotta get rid of that too.

We cut that coarsely.

I put that in there.

And the ham.

Remember, it's parsleyed ham.

This is the base, you know.

So, put the ham on the table and you can start helping me cutting it into pieces like this.

Here.

This, this, you know, coarsely.

And this is plain, regular boiled ham.

The better quality, of course, give you the better result.

- Uh-huh.

- You can add that to it.

And with that, of course, white wine, you know.

- Mm.

- About... One cup of white wine.

- Yeah.

- There is three cup to a bottle.

- You're good.

- And cup, exactly on the nose.

Okay, this... So, you know that thing is practically full here.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Okay, and now what happen here, we'll have to bring that to a boil.

- Okay.

- Bring it to a boil, cover it, and simmer it very gently for about 20, 25 minute.

Remember, Claudine, it's called jambon persille.

- Oh, then we definitely need some parsley to go with this.

- Parsleyed ham, so we put a lot of parsley in it.

The stem, you can keep it to do your stock.

- Okay.

- And we want to cut that just coarsely, you know.

- Can I just dump this in?

- Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Dump it in it.

And then the natural gelatin is going to make it so it's going to harden by itself.

And you know, a thing like this, you don't do a jambon persille for two or four people.

You do that, you have it for a week, you know.

- Well, two or four very hungry people.

- Right.

Because that will serve a good 10, 12 people for a party, you know.

You know, you let it cool off a little bit, cover it, refrigerate it at least five, six hours, preferably overnight.

Then it get hard.

So, let me unmold it here.

Want to give me a... - Okay, here's a plate.

Do you wanna unmold it on a plate?

- Yeah, yeah.

Well, first, you want to run a knife around, because basically, what you want, you want some air, you know, to go underneath, so let's see.

- There we go.

Wah.

- [Jacques] If it doesn't go here, what you have to do, you know, to get like this, and put that here, to put some air.

- Ooh.

- As soon as it gets some air, you see, it will go down.

Okay.

- Very nice.

- Isn't that beautiful?

- That is really beautiful.

- Jambon persille.

So, this can be served as such.

- Look at this.

- But very often, this is served with a sauce remoulade, you know, and the remoulade is kind of very acidic type of sauce, a kind of vinegarette.

And that's what I'm going to do.

I'm gonna chop some onion.

- I'm gonna put mustard.

- Onion, mustard.

- Capers.

- [Jacques] Yep.

And then you add some parsley.

Huh?

- Oil.

A good, high quality olive oil.

- [Jacques] Yes, yes.

- And vinegar.

- Vinegar.

- Now, you can never have too much vinegar.

- Yes.

- It's like you can never have too much garlic.

(laughs) I think that'll be good.

- Well, taste it.

- No, you know what?

- I believe you.

Okay.

Here is my jambon persille.

Look how beautiful it is.

- Mm.

- Spread that out.

Put that here.

And that, I tell you, with a crunchy, good, crunchy French bread, you know, thick, and a glass of Sauvignon blanc or a glass of anything, this is food for the God.

You know, we have plum today, we're gonna do plum, which are going to be cooked with red wine and all that.

But we're gonna serve that with a cake.

- Oh.

- So, let's start by doing the cake.

You have two stick of butter there, about two cup of sugar, a little bit of baking powder, lemon rind, and cinnamon.

And I'm gonna give you some lemon juice too.

- Great.

- And five large eggs.

(mixer whirs) Okay.

- Is that good?

- Okay, so we do a nice layer of butter in there.

And then you put sliced almonds, which you want to spread all around, you know, so they stick to the butter, give you a nice shape by the time we take them out.

Now, the cake.

You know, this is the type of cake that you do for, you know, coffee cake too, dessert too.

- Birthday.

- Can use it for a lot of things, birthday.

- I have to taste it, it's dough.

- I hate that.

I hate the raw batter like that.

I don't know how you can eat that.

- Because you're not American.

- Your mother does that all the time.

What do you mean that I'm not American?

I'm more American than you.

I just don't happen to have been born here by chance.

- Yeah, but I grew up on raw dough.

- Oh, okay.

- I mean... - All right.

Let's spread this out.

That's it, ready.

Ready for the oven.

- Looks good.

Let me just get rid of this.

- So... This has to go into the oven.

A good 350, 375 for, like, one hour.

I have another one cooked here.

And let's see.

Yeah, it should come out pretty easily, you see the bottom part of it.

- Yeah, okay.

- You know, actually, I like it to be presented this way, you know?

So, let me cut it.

Cut a little piece of that.

No, doesn't matter, because I know you want to eat a piece of this.

- Yes.

- Yeah, that's good, okay.

- Well, I'll tell you, it tastes better cooked than it does raw.

- (laughs) I'm glad to hear that.

Okay, maybe on the big plate, you can serve it.

You know, you can serve it like that.

And you know what you can do with that?

I cut a couple of slice to serve one portion, but the rest of it, could put it on top, put a bit of powdered sugar on top.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- You add some powdered sugar there.

Okay?

- It's almost a shame to put powdered sugar on it, because then you don't see all the pretty almonds.

- That's right, you shouldn't have put the powdered sugar on top.

You were right.

(Claudine laughs) Okay.

Now, we're going to cook the plum.

And there is, of course, different type of plum, different time of the year, depending where you are from, Santa Rosa, whose are very large, you know, Black Friar.

Those are red plum.

And what we do with them in term of seasoning, we put sugar, a little bit of water.

- Mm.

- Red wine, Claudine.

- Ooh, I have red wine.

- Then I'm going to put in there a bit of cinnamon, a few clove.

Put the clove, this is cloves too, so either cloves, one or the other.

And a dash of cayenne, you know?

- [Claudine] How much red wine?

One cup, two cups?

- Yes.

The whole bottle.

- The whole bottle?

- Except for a little bit.

Yes, well, it's only three cup.

That's it.

- Here, here.

- This will reduce.

Bottle of wine for eight people is not too much.

Cover that, bring it to a boil, and boil it about 10, 12, just a touch to taste.

That's mine.

That's a touch.

(Claudine laughs) 10, 12 minutes until it's done there.

And then when it cool off, this is what I have here.

And all you do after that, you see the peel, and they are cold.

When they are warm, they peel easier.

You don't really have to peel it.

The flesh is beautiful, you know.

So, we won't peel it, won't peel that one.

Okay?

- Okay.

- What happened is that all of the juice that we had in there, and we had quite a lot of juice with all of this, we divide it into two, about four cup of juice, two cup here, two cup here.

The two cup here, we reduce it, we boil it down to one cup.

And this is what I have here, one cup of syrup... - Mm.

- After it's been reduced, and it's pretty strong syrup.

You want to taste it, Claudine?

- Yep.

- You see that?

Now, this is a dessert just by itself.

You can serve it just like this with our pound cake, and you'll have a great dessert.

- The cloves are beautiful.

- Yeah, we did something else here.

On the two cup which we haven't reduced, we put a little bit of plum jam, right?

- Mm-hmm.

- Plum jam.

Put a little bit of water.

- Water.

- Hey, I have it here.

- Oh.

- And a little bit of the raw wine for taste over there.

That's it.

Mm, that's it, yeah.

And this is a mixture now that we're going to do a sherbet with.

- Oh.

- So, basically, you put it in your sherbet machine.

This is cold.

You put it into the freezer until it gets very cold, until it get froze for like a day.

And then you cover it.

- Looks beautiful.

- Put it in there and start it, which makes a lot of noise, so we're not going to start it.

But it does take a while to freeze.

And then you keep it in the freezer after.

Okay.

- Very nice.

- Now, one bowl of this, and one of that.

It's a little bit of the same thing, you know, a bowl of one, a bowl of the other, a little piece of the cake here in the center.

And then, of course, our sauces.

- Oh, and powdered sugar won't work on that, then.

- [Jacques] Yes.

She's nice and cooked.

- This is beautiful.

- And this is it.

We have our sherbet, our plum sherbet, with the poached plum and the cake.

Okay, what do you wanna do for our main course?

- Pasta.

- Sure.

That's your mother, I think... - What's her recipe?

- Maybe you want her best recipe, right, yeah?

- Yeah.

- The spaghetti and the clam sauce, I don't know whether... I know it's not going to be as good as your mother.

- I know.

But that's okay.

- But I'm gonna try my best.

I'm gonna put vegetable in it.

So, we're gonna start sauteing vegetable, and then we have to peel the asparagus.

You wanna peel some?

- Yep.

- [Jacques] Well, you... - I do it differently than you do, because then I'm done.

See, I don't have to cut the thing off.

- Okay, okay, I'll do it your way.

There is so much variation with the pasta in term of vegetable that you put in it, or not.

- Your butter's getting brown.

- Yes, that's good.

- Okay.

- Not too small, because you want the vegetable to be able to cook together, so here it is.

You see that little thing?

I have a lot of vegetable here.

Now, I'm going to start with the clam here, slowly to saute the onion.

Okay?

- Mm-hmm.

- So... Okay.

A lot of onion.

And clam.

You want to use either cherrystone or littleneck.

And it's a very small clam, all them.

The medium size we call the cherrystone.

We also use the quahog, the very large one.

- Quahog.

- Remember the one that we used to pick up?

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- You want to open one?

I'll show you here, you put... You see the opening here?

- Uh-huh.

- [Jacques] And you put your two finger here and you apply to cut into it.

- Mm-hmm.

- Now, it's open, and now there is that sinew here and there.

And this is the way you would have it, on the half shell.

I mean, on the half shell, you wouldn't even cut this and that, so you can slurp it out, right?

- [Claudine] Slurp is good.

- Slurp is good.

Okay, we wash that, in case there is any dirt in it, and then put that in there.

Right.

We don't wanna cook those right away, because they cook very fast.

- [Claudine] Oh, and they'll be like little rubber bands.

- Yeah, when they are very large, you want to cut them and you want to cut them, the best way is really to cut them with a scissor, you know?

Okay.

Now, see, the dirt will go down to the bottom very fast, so here is what we do here.

You don't have to filter it.

All you have to do is to pour it gently, you know.

- [Claudine] I missed one.

- And not put the bottom in there.

See, there is some dirt.

No, this is just a piece.

This.

White wine.

- White wine.

- That's it, this has to come to a boil and boil a few minute.

And this coming to a strong boil.

I wanna cook it a little bit for the acidity of the white wine.

We want to put some oregano in there.

- Mm-hmm, and some hot pepper flakes.

- Hot pepper flake also.

- Now, where would you like the garlic?

- The garlic, put it in there, it's cooking there.

Okay.

You want more garlic?

- If you would like to chop more garlic.

How about this tomato?

- The tomato is going to go into the vegetable now, yes.

Soon, but I didn't wanna put it at the beginning, so cut it into a... Dice.

Let me check on my pasta now.

Ah, now it's boiling nicely, yeah.

- [Claudine] That's a fresh pasta, so it won't take too long to cook.

- I know.

And that's why, you know, you have to calculate your menu accordingly.

About three minutes for that pasta.

About eight, nine minutes, 10 minutes, depending on your... Linguine, hm, I like it.

Al dente, a bit firm to the bite, but I don't like raw, so... It's about fine, though.

Okay, you'll stir that in.

- Mm-hmm.

- That's good.

- Okay.

- Okay, this is going to drain for a minute.

Now, you see, I'm gonna toss it together.

That's very important, Claudine, because often, people put the pasta out of there.

Here, put that away.

Out of there, and the pasta very often form a lump, you know, on the plate, and it's not seasoned, and they put the sauce on top.

No, you have to season this and put a little bit of grated Parmesan cheese here.

- Okay.

- Salt, pepper, to the seasoning.

And in there, I always put a little bit of the water of the cooked pasta, you know.

Usually, I do that.

Here, I don't do it.

- Okay.

(laughs) - What I don't do it... - You don't feel like it.

- Because I have the juice of this.

I'm gonna put some of the juice of this.

Okay.

Now, some of that juice here.

And you know, what I want you to do for me, give me some of the... Okay, that's gonna motion the pasta.

Now, put the clam in there.

- Okay.

Walking around with a piece of cheese over here.

And you see the pasta is getting a bit green there, but how soon how they have all of that liquid here.

That pasta is moist now.

And even if I feel that I don't have enough here, I could have a little more here.

Again, a little bit of that pasta water.

So, here, that pasta has to be seasoned.

That's my point.

And you see the pasta is seasoned now.

- Mm-hmm.

- And look, if you clean up the table a little bit, there is basically no liquid left inside.

You see that?

- Yeah, because it absorbed.

- [Jacques] Yeah, and I put quite a lot of that liquid here.

So... - We could put a little bit of oregano in there.

- Well, I put some in there already.

- Okay.

- Let me put the... Okay, with your spoon, help me to put... You're not here to eat the pasta.

You're here to help me.

- I'm helping, I'm helping.

- There's a piece left there.

Okay.

Now, I will toss the pasta with it.

Okay, I'm serving you all of this in there, Claudine.

- Okay.

- [Jacques] And I like for that to serve the sauce directly on top of it.

- Now, I know in Italy, it's sort of taboo to do cheese on seafood.

- Oh, that's right, I remember that.

Yes, your mother always said that because we love it.

She loves it.

- Yeah.

- And people say, "Oh, no, you're not supposed to mix."

Now, let me stir a little bit of the pasta in there.

But you know, most of the clam are right on top here.

Some of the vegetables, which is really what I want.

- And they're totally cooked.

I mean, that took no time.

- Yeah, but you like those clam, you know, not to be overcooked, otherwise they get really tough.

- Can I put some of this on top, maybe?

- You can put some of that on top.

I put maybe a little bit of... If we go with Parmesan cheese, so let's put a little bit of... All right, right on top here.

- That looks lovely.

- And half of this for you.

- Thank you.

- Half for me.

- I'll put this over here.

- And here it is, linguine with clam sauce and vegetable.

I think we got a great menu today.

- Definitely.

- I'm starting right with the jambon persille, you know, and the remoulade.

It's a type of thing which remind me of Burgundy when I was a child.

- Well, I'm gonna remind you a little bit more.

I've got some great wine for you.

- [Jacques] Okay, what do we have there?

- This is a hundred percent Sauvignon blanc, and it's Sauvignon Saint-Bris.

- Saint-Bris.

- But what's very cool is that this is the only Sauvignon blanc to be produced in the Chablis area.

- Mm, that's... - So, it's kind of nice, and it'll pick up your remoulade and it'll be wonderful.

- Mm, good.

So, I think I'm going to have some of that.

- I think you definitely should.

- Yes, I love the wine from... I love any type of wine, but some more than others.

(Claudine laughs) Sometime too much, but... And your pasta.

- I have beautiful spaghetti and clam sauce with beautiful vegetables in there, even some tomatoes and garlic and everything.

- Your mother would like it, do you think?

- Mom would love it.

- Okay, maybe not as good as hers, but I think it should be pretty good.

- I think it's gonna be wonderful.

- And afterward, we have over there?

- Oh, we have a nice salad, some beautiful bread.

And we have... Well, my friend's birthday cake that we're just gonna have to test out first.

(laughs) - Yes.

- And the sorbet, which I'm very, very surprised at the amount of taste of clove in it.

It's really, really good.

- [Jacques] The red wine reduction and the granite.

- Yes.

- So, this is a great menu.

- And speaking of red wine, I'm gonna have a Sangiovese, which is traditionally from Tuscany, but we're making it now in California.

Staple grape there.

And it's very food-friendly here.

- Mm-hmm, Sangiovese with pasta, this is classic.

- This is wonderful.

- Okay, red wine for you, white for me.

- Sounds good.

- Nice cooking together.

- Nice cooking with you.

- And happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.